"She cut him," Lucas said. "Was she sure?"
"Pretty sure. Not positive."
"Blond, strong, American. You didn't see the car, see what make it was?"
"No, uh, she didn't say anything about that."
"Anything that you can think of that she said, that might be of more use? Anything about the guy? It's really important, because he's still out there and we think he's nuts."
"She didn't say too much… just that thing about how the shots weren't too loud."
"Did she say what she took off the body?"
"Nothing like that," the woman said, and Lucas heard the lie in her voice.
"How did you find me?"
"I thought about where a state policeman would stay in Duluth, and called, and they switched me up to your room."
Smart enough, Lucas thought. He took the shot: "Listen, miss. We know that Mary Wheaton was killed by mistake. We know there was another woman down there. I mean, we know it was you. We would really like to talk to you. For your own protection. We found the place you were staying…"
She said, frightened, "I'm going to hang up now."
"No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. Tell me one thing. Please. Did you-did she-shit, however you want to say it, did somebody recover a computer from the dead man? And what happened to it? It could be critical."
Another pause, then: "She gave it to me. She was afraid to sell it in Duluth, because it was full of Russian. So I took it down to Minneapolis and I sold it. I needed money to get back to Los Angeles."
"Who did you sell it to?"
"A man, a young man, a student, maybe, at the university."
"What'd you do, just walk around asking people? Did you have a contact?"
"I had a contact. This is a man who… buys things."
"Okay. Tell me this, then. Please. I'm really not mean, I'm just anxious, I don't want you to hang up before I can ask these questions…"
"You sound mean," she said again. She said, "I'm outa here. I'm going to LA. Don't bother to look for me."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lucas said urgently. "Tell me, this young man, do you have a name? Can you tell me what he looks like?"
"His name is George. He is blond and he's good-looking. He has a square jaw and blue eyes and a short haircut; he puts gel in his hair. He was wearing one of those football jackets, you know, the kind that is wool with leather sleeves, red wool with white leather sleeves."
"When did you sell the computer? How long has he had it?"
"Two days… I sold it to him the night before last."
"Where?"
"At Moos Tower, the medical building. There's a cafeteria in the basement. He had a table. There are two or three guys who buy stuff there. Stolen stuff. In Moos Tower."
"Can you…?"
"I'm going to hang up now. I'm afraid you're tracing this call."
"No, no, please…"
But she was gone. And maybe, he thought, to LA, where they'd never find her.
"Ah, boy…"
Hoping she'd call back, Lucas left the room phone open, got on his cell phone and called the duty man at BCA offices in St. Paul. "The call would have gone into the main desk, and they transferred it up to my room: see if you can pin it down. Where it came from-we need the number."
Then he made another call, and a woman answered. "Marcy? Lucas."
She was happy to hear from him. "Hey, man, you haven't called for weeks. What's going on?"
Lieutenant Marcy Sherrill was head of the Intelligence Unit for the Minneapolis police, and a protege. He sketched in quickly what had happened, and said, "So I've got a problem. Is there any chance that you could put somebody over at the U, and see if you can figure out who this guy is? I'll come down and get him, but I need to get something started."
"I'll put somebody over there right now-it's a little late, there may not be too many people to talk to, but I can have somebody there in twenty minutes."
"Thanks, sweetie. How's the love life?"
"We gotta talk. Do you know Don Cary?"
"Yeah-but he was married the last time I checked." Lucas looked at his watch. Time was running…
"Not anymore," Marcy said. "His wife, you know, was a computer freak. She said, 'Fuck Minnesota,' and took off for California. He wasn't invited. The divorce was final last week."
"You might be moving on him a little too quick."
"Actually, he started mooning around here two months ago, and we've gone out for a lunch a few times. He was pretty much over her before she left… The marriage had been in trouble since about week one. He'd like to have a kid or two."
"He's a pretty good guy, for a lawyer. He plays a mean game of lawyer-league basketball," Lucas said. "Marcy, we gotta talk, and I gotta run, right now. I gotta."
"Keep your ass down; I'll get back."
He hung up, looked at the phone for five seconds, ten seconds, willing a call from the witness woman. Nothing; he tossed his keys up in the air, caught them, and took off, listening for the ring of the telephone until the door banged shut behind him.
Chapter 9
Lucas kept a police flasher in the back of the truck, spent the ten seconds necessary to stick it to the roof of the car and plug it into the cigarette lighter, and took off, running at speed up the hill, through a couple of red lights, and out the back side of Duluth toward Virginia. As soon as he got free of traffic, he called Reasons, but got his wife.
"He is not here just now," she said, in an accent much like Nadya's. "He has a cell phone…"
Lucas took the number and redialed. Reasons came up after three rings, and Lucas said, "We got a problem, man."
He explained, and when he was done, Reasons said, "You want me to come?"
"I don't know what you'd do. The place is overrun by cops already, but I thought you oughta know."
"Jesus, I oughta come." Reasons sounded anxious. "But my wife… she's been giving me some shit about being gone all the time, and I was just on my way home."
"Go home then. I'll fill you in tomorrow."
"Thanks. If anything more comes up, let me know."
Lucas fumbled around in his pocket, found the numbers he'd scribbled down for the Virginia cops, and dialed in again. As he did, he looked down at the speedometer: he was pushing the car along at ninety-five, and the car didn't like it. The Virginia cops came up and Lucas identified himself: "What happened at Spivak's? Is my guy okay?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't release any information on that," the woman said. Her voice was cool, almost bored. "It's an ongoing incident. If you could call back in an hour…"
"Jesus Christ, was anybody hurt? I'm with the fuckin' BCA." He was talking too loud again.
"Sir, this is being recorded…"
"Go ahead and record it, you moron!" he shouted. "I'm trying to find out if my guy is okay. What'd you do, shoot him?"
"Sir…"
He hung up, tried his man's phone, and got an answering-machine recording. He dialed Rose Marie Roux at her home in Minneapolis, was told by her husband that she was at a concert with a girlfriend. "Aaron Copland, the cowboy shit. I took a pass."
Frustrated, Lucas dropped the phone on the passenger seat and concentrated on driving. But he couldn't stand it, and ten minutes later, he picked up the phone and called Virginia again. Same woman: "Sir, I've reported this incident to my supervisor. I cannot give you any information…"
Lucas clicked off and pushed the car until it wouldn't push anymore, and instead, whimpered with the wind and tire noise. The side of the highway, for all practical purposes, was empty, the houses a half mile apart, and he was flying through a tunnel carved out by his not-especially-bright headlights. He got off at the first Virginia exit, throttled back to sixty as he went through town and still squealed his tires on the turn onto the main drag.
Two cop cars were parked outside Spivak's, light bars turning, a cop standing next to one of them. A silver civilian car was double-parked beside the cop cars. Probably another city car, Lucas thought. He dumped the Acura across the street from the bar, killed the engine, and headed for the bar entrance at a trot.